Swamped by JCPS calls, state education board changes its contact info

Roughly 100 people filled the pews of King Solomon Missionary Baptist Church to learn about the proposed state takeover of Jefferson County Public Schools.
Marty Pearl/Special to Courier Journal

Buy Photo

Lucy, Christina, and Alexander King rallied in support of JCPS and superintendent Marty Pollio on Thursday at the Van Hoose Education Center. 4/26/18(Photo: Marty Pearl/Special to Courier Journal)Buy Photo

Correction: This story's headline was updated to clarify that it was the state education board's contact information that changed.

The contact information on a state website for the school board members who will vote on a takeover of Jefferson County Public Schools has been updated to remove personal email addresses and phone numbers because the members were "inundated" with calls and emails.

The board members now have state email addresses, and the phone number listed for each is the same and connects to the Kentucky Department of Education.

An employee in the education commissioner's office apologized to the board members for the calls in an email obtained by Courier Journal.

"I am truly sorry that you've been inundated with calls and emails over the JCPS matter," wrote Susan Palmer, an executive administrative secretary in the office of the commissioner. "I hope that these measures will (reduce) that effect."

The state's interim Education Commissioner, Wayne Lewis, recommended the state takeover of JCPS last month along with the long-awaited results of the district audit. In an email, he wrote that he approved of creating official email addresses to separate board business from their personal matters.

"Even without this situation, I would have recommended doing so. It became immediately necessary to do so in this case because of the number of emails members were receiving from citizens," Lewis wrote in a statement sent Friday evening.

A spokeswoman for the Kentucky Department of Education, Nancy Rodriguez, said she didn't have a sense of the number of emails or calls members had received. But she added that "board members have continued to receive emails from citizens" with their new accounts.